Choice Scene: "Am I getting through to you! Alva!"

Tech Specs: Widescreen letterbox enhanced for 16:9 TVs, Dolby Digital Sound, English, French, Spanish Language Subtitles

The Nicolas Cage who stars in Vampire's Kiss looks a little like today's action star Nicolas Cage, but don't be fooled. They are not the same man. The Cage in Vampire's Kiss lacks any common sense. He grabs hold of a completely insane character choice and wrestles this one-of-a-kind film to the mat with the abandon of a true artist. Today's Nick Cage does safe movie star vehicles for the Michael Bays and the Simon Wests and if we're lucky, he might do one for a John Woo now and again.

This DVD release may portend a return of that Nick Cage we're hoping for when we get sucked into another summer suck-fest, and I say this while sheepishly admitting a certain affinity for the not-so-much-good-as-kinda-watchable Gone In 60 Seconds remake. On the commentary track, Cage seems to be in awe of his own performance. Not in a "Damn I'm good" kind of way, but in an "I sure was young and crazy" kind of way.

Vampire's Kiss tells the story of Peter Lowe (Cage) and his strange transformation after taking a beautiful girl (Jennifer Beals) with a biting fetish home from a club. Not only does Cage act up a cyclone, but he catches Maria Conchita Alonso in the updraft as Peter's tortured assistant Alva. To call this picture a black comedy would be like calling Bob Hope middle-aged. It lunges for your throat and keeps you laughing even after it has broken the skin and gone back in for seconds.

Cage plays his part broadly, but with such conviction that he never becomes a cartoon, just an expressionistic idea of the walking dead. To go back to this picture reminds us (hopefully along with Cage) that the great performances ask the actors to drop their cool and become foolish. Brando died in the tomato patch with an orange in his mouth, Orson Welles raged around the room like a giant baby, and from those possibly embarrassing moments come two of the greatest characters of cinematic history, Vito Corleone and Charles Foster Kane. To bring Peter Lowe to life, Cage ate a live cockroach.

Hopefully the sheer gall of Cage's performance inspires his older self to take those same chances, to possibly look like a fool in the pursuit of serious work. For those of you who are not Nicolas Cage, this picture is a must-see on the merits of being one of the bleakest, and the same time funniest, films I have ever seen, thanks in no small part to the performance that should have won Cage his little gold man.

Vampire's Kiss